Free The American Boy by Andrew Taylor Page B

afternoon unexpectedly changed its course as I was walking down Long Acre on my way to Gaunt-court and Mrs Jem’s six shillings, the balance of the price we had agreed for my aunt Reynolds’s possessions. I stopped to buy a buttonhole and, while the woman was fixing it to my lapel, I glanced over her shoulder along the way I had come. I saw some twenty-five yards away, quite distinctly, the man with the bird’s-nest beard.
    As if aware I had recognised him, he ducked into the shadow of a shop doorway. I gave the girl a penny and hurried back along the street. He plunged out of the doorway and blundered into one of the side roads leading down to Covent Garden.
    Without conscious thought, I set off in pursuit. I acted upon impulse – partly, no doubt, because Mr Frant wanted to know more about the man, and I welcomed an opportunity to oblige Mr Frant. But there was both more and less to it than that: I was like a cat chasing a rope’s end: I chased the man not because I wanted to catch him but because he moved.
    The market was drawing to its close for the day. We pushed our way into a swirling sea of humanity and vegetables. There was a tremendous din – of iron-shod wheels and hooves on cobbles, of half a dozen barrel organs, each playing a different tune, of people swearing and shouting and crying their wares. Despite his age and weight and condition, my quarry was remarkably agile. We zigzagged through the market, where he tried to conceal himself behind a stall selling oranges. I found him out, but he saw me, and off he went again. He leapt like a hunter over a wheelbarrow full of cocoa nuts, veered past the church and swerved into the mouth of Henrietta-street.
    It so happened that there was a pile of rotting cabbage leaves on the corner and this, quite literally, was his downfall. He slipped and went down. Though he tried at once to scramble up, his ankle gave way and he sank back, swearing. I seized him by the shoulder. He straightened his spectacles and looked up at me, his face red with exertion.
    â€œI meant no harm, sir,” he panted in that absurdly deep voice. “As God is my witness, I meant no harm.”
    â€œThen why did you run away?”
    â€œI was afraid, sir. I thought you might set the constables on me.”
    â€œThen why did you follow me in the first place?”
    â€œBecause –” He broke off. “It does not matter.” His voice took on a richer note and the words that followed fell into a rhythm, like words often repeated: “I give you my word, sir, as one gentleman to another, that I am as innocent as the day is long. It is true that I have fallen upon evil times but the fault has not been mine. I have been unlucky in the choice of my companions, perhaps, and cursed by a generous spirit, by a fatal tendency to trust my fellow men. Yet –”
    â€œEnough, sir,” I interrupted. “Why have you been following me?”
    â€œA father’s feelings,” he said, beating himself on the breast with both fists, “may not be denied. The heart which beats within this breast is that of a gentleman of an old and distinguished Irish family.”
    By now he was kneeling in the gutter and a knot of spectators was gathering around us to enjoy the spectacle.
    â€œBloody clunch,” an urchin cried. “He’s dicked in the nob.”
    â€œWhich, you may ask, has been the worst of my many losses?” my companion continued. “Was it the loss of my patrimony? My enforced departure from my native heath? Was it the bitter knowledge that my reputation has been unjustly besmirched by men not fit to brush my coat? Was it disappointment in my profession and the loss, through the intemperate jealousy of others, of my hopes of regaining my fortune by my own exertions? Was it the death of the beloved wife of my bosom? No, sir, bad though all these things were, none of them was the worst blow to befall me.” He raised his